Positive emotions – even those viewed through a distorted lens – may play an exacerbating role in fueling eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, which has a death rate 12 times higher for females between the ages of 15 and 24 than all other causes of death combined.

Obesophobia or Pocrescophobia, from the Greek phobia, meaning fear or morbid fear and obeso, meaning fat, is a persistent and abnormal fear of gaining weight, especially in cultures that value being thin. This phobia was listed as a rare disease by the Office of Rare Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.
Certain individuals suffering from this phobia originally start with a desire to lose weight which turns into a compulsive desire to avoid all of the things that could result in...